Tuesday, March 17, 2015

In debates on the politically controversial term Arya, we keep hearing from Hindus and
Buddhists that it only means "noble", as in the Buddha's "four
noble (Arya) truths". Following
the Arya Samaj reinterpretation of the Vedas, many even insist that in the
Vedic context, Arya meant “good”
while its opposite Anarya meant “bad,
immoral”. These moralistic and self-flattering readings bespeak a deficient
sense of historicity, i.c. the realization that over time, terminology is
susceptible to change. Attempts to derive Arya
from a basic root *ar-, to which
various meanings have been assigned, make good sense in principle, but bypass
the Vedic age when from this ancient root, a far more precise meaning had
crystallized.

While it is now a matter of consensus that the term
had no racial or linguistic meaning ("Nordic" c.q.
"Indo-European"), it did have an ethnic meaning. Starting from
different considerations, invasionist linguist JP Mallory and anti-invasionist
historian Shrikant Talageri agree on this, and we will argue further in favour
of this finding. In the earliest historical age, attested in the oldest
literature in Indo-European languages, we find Arya or cognate terms used in
the sense of "compatriot", "one of us", viz. by the
Anatolians, Iranians and Paurava Indians. In the Iranian world, it retained its
purely ethnic meaning, as evidenced at the World Aryan Fair in Tajikistan 2006.
In India, it evolved to "one who shares the civilizational norms of the
Vedic Paurava tribes", and since it was in the Paurava milieu that the
Vedas were composed, it came to mean "Veda-abiding",
"civilized", and thence "noble".

In the Vedic-Avestan age, a group that designated
itself as Arya could be deemed Anarya by another group that considered
itself Arya. In particular, the
Iranians called themselves Arya but in the Vedas they were designated by
various tribal names including Dasa (which has nothing to do with “Dravidian
aboriginals”) but never as Arya, a
term which the Vedic people reserved for themselves. So, this was a relative
ethnic term, not having a fixed reference to a particular nation, but used in
self-reference by different nations. But when a community strongly identified
with the Vedic tradition settled in new lands, viz. the Brahmins who settled in
South India, the name Arya (>
Aiyar, Aiyangar) did acquire an absolute ethnic meaning accepted by both
insiders and outsiders. This division between Northern “Aryans” and their
Dravidian surroundings presented an instance of the contrast between
Indo-European and non-Indo-European, and in the 19th century,
scholars prematurely generalized this into the assumption that Arya was an early synonym for
“Indo-European”. This was a projection of a recent situation onto the
proto-historic past, a childhood disease of the discipline of Indo-European
philology.

In debates
on the politically controversial term Ārya,
we keep hearing from Hindus and Buddhists that it only means "noble",
as in the Buddha's "four noble (Ārya)
truths" and his “noble (Ārya)
eightfold path”. Following the post-Vedic reinterpretations of the Vedas by
Hindus from the Purāna authors
down to the Ārya Samāj and today’s
travelling gurus, many even insist that in the Vedic context, Ārya meant “good, moral” while its
opposite Anārya meant “bad, immoral”.
These moralistic and self-flattering readings bespeak a deficient sense of
historicity, i.c. the realization that over time, terminology is susceptible to
change. They project, or so we will argue, a meaning common in later times on
to the term Ārya in Vedic context.
Others go to the opposite extreme: they first suggest a deep etymology of the term,
situated in the proto-language’s register of extremely simple and fundamental
concepts, and next pretend that this is the sense in which the Vedic people
used it.

Deep etymology of Ārya

Let us
consider the deep etymology approach first. It is still in dispute, but one hypothesis has an edge over the others.
Köbler [2000 48 ff.] gives a range of explanations that have been proposed in
the past two centuries.

Ārya
has been analysed as stemming from the root *ar-, ‘plough, cultivate’
(cf. Latin arare, aratrum), which would make them the sedentary
people as opposed to the nomads and hunter-gatherers; and lends itself to a
figurative meaning of “cultivated, civilized”. Others, however, have connected
it with the root of Latin ire, “to
go”, so as to make it an apt name for a nomadic populations: the proverbial
roaming warrior-bands that must have ransacked the Harappan cities.

A more
surprising hypothesis derives Ārya as
a lengthened form of Arya from a root
*al-, “‘other” (cfr. Greek allos and Latin alius,
“other”), hence “inclined towards the other/stranger”, hence “hospitable”. This
could be similar in meaning to the name of the god Aryaman,
“other-minded”, whose attribute is hospitality. From this sense, an ethnic
meaning is tentatively derived: “we, the hospitable ones”, “we, your hosts”,
hence “we, the lords of this country”. This too, admittedly, sounds rather
contrived.

Also
surprising is a meaning suggested in attempts to establish a deep historic
connection (which the present author too considers very likely) between
Indo-European and Semitic. Summarizing such attempts, Sūrya Kānta Śāstrī
[n.d.:3] links Proto-Indo-European *h2er-
(> ar, ārya) with “Arabic,
Hebrew hrr, ‘to be free’”.
This is the root of words like hurriyat,
“freedom”, and tahrīr, “liberation”.

Alternatively,
ārya could be from a root *ar,
“possess, acquire, share” (cf. Greek aresthai, “acquire”), an
interpretation beloved of Marxist scholars who interpret the Ārya class
as the owner class.

Another
explanation, the most likely and most popular one, is from a root *ar-, “to
fit; orderly, correct”, cf. Greek artios, “fitting, perfect”; and hence
“skilled, able”, cf. Latin ars, “art, dexterity”; Greek aretè, “virtue”,
aristos, “best”. This may in turn be the same root as in the central
Vedic concept rta, Avestan arta,
“order, regularity”, whence rtu, “season”, cf. Greek ham-artè, “at
the same time”.

Attempts to
derive Ārya from a basic root *ar-, to which various meanings have
been assigned, make good sense in principle, but they bypass the Vedic age when
from this ancient root, a far more precise meaning had crystallized.

Ancient Indo-European meaning of Ārya

While it is
now a matter of consensus that the term Ārya
had no racial meaning, whether “Nordic” or other [Ghurye 1932, Hock 1999], nor even
a linguistic meaning ("Indo-European"), it did have a subjective
ethnic meaning in the oldest attested Indo-European languages, viz. Hittite,
Avestan and Vedic Sanskrit. Starting from different considerations, invasionist
linguists like J.P. Mallory and anti-invasionist historian Shrikant Talageri
agree on this, and we will argue further in favour of this finding.

Anatolian

In the
earliest historical age, attested in the oldest literature in Indo-European
languages, we find Ārya or cognate
terms used in the sense of "compatriot", "one of us", viz. by
the Anatolians, Iranians and Paurava (Vedic)
Indians.

The use of Ārya cognates in the Anatolian languages
Hittite and Lycian in the sense of “compatriot, fellow citizen” is given in some
recent textbooks of Indo-European linguistics, e.g.:

“The most
loaded term in the reconstructed lexicon is *h4erós
or *h4eryós, ‘member of
one’s own group’, which in Indo-Iranian is generally represented as ‘Aryan’.
From *h4erós we have
Anatolian, e.g. Hittite arā, ‘member
of one’s own group, peer, friend’, Lycian arus-,
‘citizens’, while *h4eryós
yields (perhaps) Old Irish aire,
‘freeman’, more certainly Avestan airya,
‘Aryan’, Sanskrit aryá, ‘kind’, ārya-, ‘Aryan’ (cf. arí-, ‘faithful’). The evidence suggests that the word was, at
least initially, one that denoted one who belongs to the community in contrast to an
outsider; a derivative of the word is found in Hittite āra, ‘(what is) fitting’, and natta
āra, ‘not right’, cf. the use of kosher
which originally meant (in Hebrew) ‘what is fitting’.” [Mallory &
Adams:266]

While the
connection with older and deeper meanings is transparent, the operative meaning
of these ārya-related words in
Anatolian society was “compatriot”. It didn’t exactly mean “Hittite” or
“Lycian”, at least it wasn’t a synonym of those ethnonyms, for their neighbours
didn’t use those words to refer to these nations. They themselves used it in
self-reference, as “us” in distinction from “them”.

Iranian

The same
situation prevailed in ancient Iranian: “aryo-:
self-designation of the Indo-Iranians. Perhaps a derivative of ar-.” [Watkins 2000:5] This root ar-, in turn, is explained as “To fit
together”[Watkins 2000:5] Further to aryo-: “1. Aryan, from Sanskrit ārya, compatriot. 2. Iran, […] from Old
Persian āriya, compatriot.”[Watkins 2000:5]

Likewise in
to the Online Etymology Dictionary (http://www.etymonline.com/, consulted June 2011), lemma Aryan,
we read: “Ancient
Persians used the name in reference to themselves (Old Persian ariya-), hence Iran. Ultimately from Skt. ārya- ‘compatriot’;
in later language ‘noble, of good family’. Also the name Sanskrit-speaking
invaders of India gave themselves in the ancient texts, from which early 19c.
European philologists (Friedrich Schlegel, 1819, who linked the word with Germanic
Ehre, ‘honor’)
applied it to the ancient people we now call Indo-Europeans (suspecting that
this is what they called themselves); this use is attested in English from
1851. […] German philologist Max Müller (1823-1900) popularized the term in his
writings on comparative linguistics, recommending it as the name (replacing Indo-European, Indo-Germanic, Caucasian, Japhetic)
for the group of related, inflected languages connected with these peoples,
mostly found in Europe but also including Sanskrit and Persian. […] Gradually
replaced in comparative linguistics c.1900 by Indo-European, except when used to distinguish IE languages of
India from non-IE ones. […] As an ethnic designation, however, it is properly
limited to Indo-Iranians (most justly to the latter) […].”

In his Behistun
inscription, ca. 500 BC, Darius proudly called himself and his family since at
least nine generations Airya,
apparently in the caste sense of “noble”, “high-born”. The name Iran itself is from Airyānām Xśathra,
“dominion of the Airya-s”. As a term
in international usage, it soon became more than self-referential, it became a
pure ethnonym also used by outsiders.

Yet, until
modern linguists launched the notion of an Iranian language family, the term
was not coterminous with the set of all speakers of Iranian languages. Some
wayward Iranian-speaking peoples were not considered Airya by the citizens of the Persian and Afghan heartland of
Iranian culture. From the Avesta down to Firdausi’s Śāhnāmeh (ca. 1000 CE), Tūrya or Tuirya was the
name of Iranian-speaking people living beyond the Oxus, roughly contrasted with
the Airya as nomadic with sedentary, illiterate
with literate, barbarian with civilized. They were generally deemed hostile
though some of them also accepted Zarathushtra’s religion, which promoted
agriculture and the domestication of the environment. As soon as Turkic tribes
started replacing the Iranian Scythians as masters of the Central-Asian
steppes, the term got increasingly identified with the Turks, but originally it
marked an intra-Iranian distinction between barbarian and civilized speakers of
the various Iranian dialects.

The name Ērān/Iran was restored by Reza Shah
Pahlevi in 1935 as a more accurate replacement of Persia, which was a pars pro
toto ever since the Persian Achaemenids united the Iranians under one
sceptre.

At the World Aryan Fair held in 2006 in
Tajikistan, declared “guardian of Aryan civilization”, the “Aryan” peoples
represented were all Iranian-speaking: Kurds, Ossetes (Scythians), Pathans, Persians,
Tajiks, Baluch, and Indian Parsis. After the World Avesta Conference in Dushanbe
in 1992, this was another instance of open support by the newly independent
Tajik state to the pan-Iranian movement. Though not officially anti-Islamic, the
movement’s conspicuous Zoroastrian revivalism makes the Islamic governments in
Iran and Pakistan distrust it. A striking feature of the Aryan Fair was the
widespread use of swastika flags featuring two intertwined blue swastikas,
termed “wheel of Mithra”, the sun-god.

Vedic

“The
Sanskrit word ārya- (…) was the
self-designation of the Vedic Indic people”, according to a standard textbook
of Indo-European linguistics. [Fortson 2004:187] This is approximately true,
but Shrikant Talageri fine-tunes this definition: it applies to the Vedic
people, but only to some Indic people, viz. those of the tribe that created the
Veda.

When
listing and discussing all 36 instances of the use of Ārya in the Rg-Veda, Talageri concludes: “The word is used in the sense of
‘We, the Noble’. When an Iranian, for example, used the word Airya, he undoubtedly meant an Iranian,
or even perhaps an Iranian belonging to his own particular tribe or community.
He would never have dreamt of referring to a Vedic Aryan or an Irishman by the
same term. The use of the word Ārya
in the Rigveda must be understood in this sense: the Vedic Aryans used the word
Ārya in reference to Vedic Aryans as
distinct from other people, and not in reference to Indo-European language
speaking people as distinct from non-Indo-European language speaking people.
All other people, Indo-European or otherwise, other than themselves, were non-Āryas to the Vedic Aryans.” [Talageri
2000:154-155]

In the
Rg-Veda, the ethnic horizon mainly consists of the “five peoples”, pañca janāh, conceived as descent
groups of five patriarchs: Anu, Druhyu, Turvaśu, Yadu and Puru. These five were the five sons of Yayāti, himself a king belonging to the Aila lineage (from Ilā,
daughter of Ur-patriarch Manu Vaivasvata)
or Lunar dynasty. The
term Ārya is used in the Rg-Veda for
three individuals belonging to the Paurava tribe: king Divodāsa, his father Vadhryaśva, and his descendant Sudās, winner of the crucial battle of the Ten Kings. In a tribal
sense, it always refers to the Paurava tribe or segments of it, the putative
descendents of Puru, youngest and
favoured among the five sons of king Yayāti.
In nine cases, reference is to Ārya
enemies. This means that politically, they were temporarily in the enemy camp,
but ethnically they were of the same stock as the Vedic seers. They and the Dāsa-s are distinguished as sanābhi (kinsmen) c.q. nistya (non-kindred) enemies. Contrary to the moralistic
interpretations by the Ārya Samāj and
other moderns, Ārya did not mean
“good” nor Anārya “bad”. Even a
hostile reference to a traitorous fellow-Paurava will still call him Ārya, while non-Paurava friends whose
virtues are praised do not get promoted to the Ārya category.

The
Paurava-s considered all others, including Iranians (Dāsa, Dasyu, Pani) and non-Paurava Indians (Yādava, Aiksvaku, et al.), as non-Ārya. It is possible that the latter, like the Iranians, also
considered themselves as Ārya and the
Vedic Paurava-s as non-Ārya, but we simply don’t have their
testimony for that period. Only when the Paurava-originated Vedic tradition became
normative for the neighbouring tribes did Ārya
gradually lose its Paurava
exclusiveness and acquire the non-ethnic meaning of “Vedic”, “partaking of
Vedic tradition”, “civilized”, “noble”; while Anārya became “barbarian”.

The one exception in the Rg-Veda where ārya seems to have a non-ethnic, generally moral meaning, is RV
9:63:5: krnvanto viśvam āryam, “making everything ārya” or “doing every ārya (deed)”, usually translated as “ennobling the world”.

The non-Aryans in the Rg-Veda

The
Iranians were divided in tribes, some of which are mentioned in the Rg-Veda. Of
these, some are also known through Greco-Roman sources: Dahae corresponds to Vedic Dāsa,
Parnoi to Pani. Through Avestan and more recent Iranian sources, we
know of the Dahyu, “nation”, the
Vedic Dasyu; and of at least four of
the tribes mentioned as opponents of Vedic king Sudās in the Battle of the Ten Kings: Pashtu or Pathan, in the Veda
Paktha; Persian or Parśu; Parthian or Prthu; and Baluch (living near the Bolan pass) or Bhalāna. Likewise, the Medes (now Kurds)
are probably the Madra-s. That
Persians and Medes are known historically as living in Western Iran while their
confrontation with the Vedic people took place in what is now Pakistan, is not
really problematic. From Mesopotamian sources we know of them as intruders from
the East. The intervening centuries were sufficient to allow a migration or
expansion from the Indo-Iranian border zoneto Mesopotamia.

It is a
matter for wonder that so many authors have seen in the Dāsas and other opponents of the Vedic people the Dravidian or
Munda “aboriginals” confronting the “Aryan invaders”. To the careful reader,
the Iranian identity of most of them is simply obvious.

For those
who are inclined to dismiss Talageri’s views as discredited by his Hindu
nationalism, note that in a number of respects, his position goes against the
majority opinion among Hindu nationalists, e.g. his denying an implication of
moral superiority to the Vedic Ārya-s.
While many Hindu writers assume that “the battles between the Vedic Aryans and
their enemies were somehow battles between Good and Evil (…) our analysis of
the Rigveda and Vedic history is not based on this rosy viewpoint” . [Talageri
2008:368] In fact, “there is nothing to indicate that the Āryas were more
civilized and cultured than the Dāsas, (…) nor that the struggles between the Āryas
and Dāsas involved any noble social, moral and ethical issues.” [Talageri
2000:405]

In the
context of Talageri’s identification of the Iranian tribes, we note that Hindu
nationalist author N.R. Waradpande [2000:116-117] denies an ethnic meaning to Prthu and Parśu,
preferring their literal meaning of “broad” c.q. “axe” (the latter actually translates
the similar-sounding paraśu). Against this, Talageri [2008:] shakes the Hindutva pride further by
arguing that the name Paraśurāma, “Rama with the axe”, is a
misreading by Puranic authors of the Vedic name Parśurāma, “Persian Rama”, a nickname
of Rāma Jāmadagnya, author of RV
X.110, for whom he manages to demonstrate an Iranian ancestry. This means that
the authors of the Purāna-s,
treated as revelation by many Hindus, misunderstood the name of Vishnu’s sixth
incarnation. More generally, it illustrates a point made repeatedly in
Talageri’s work, explicitly and implicitly, that the Sanskrit literary
tradition was as human and prone to changes and retroprojective
reinterpretations as the religious text corpus of other civilizations.

Relative and absolute use of Ārya

It is possible
and indeed likely that other Indian tribes contemporaneous with the Vedic
Pauravas also called themselves Ārya
(and the Paurava Anārya), but they
have left us no texts to prove it. After the spreading of the Vedic tradition
outside the Paurava tribe among these other tribes, such usage may have
facilitated the adoption of the already familiar term Ārya in the (to them) new meaning of “Vedic”.

But sometimes
a community strongly identified with the Vedic tradition settled in new lands,
where no one was familiar with the term Ārya.
In Northwest India, the neighbouring peoples, the Iranians and the non-Paurava
Indo-Aryans, already knew the term and probably used it to designate
themselves. But in South India, the term Ārya
came todesignate the Northern immigrants who
described themselves as such: Buddhist and Jaina preachers and Brahmin
settlers. The latter's caste names Aiyar
and Aiyangar are evolutes of Ārya. The local population took the name
Ārya to be an objective designation,
identified with Northerner and speaker of Indo-Aryan.

This
division between Northern-originated “Aryans” and their Dravidian surroundings
presented an instance of the distinction between Indo-European and
non-Indo-European, with the former designated as Ārya. A similar situation had existed in the lands conquered by the
Iranians, where the Semitic, Turkic, Uralic and other communities were
non-Aryan in contrast with the Indo-European-speaking Iranian or “Aryan”
conquerors. In the 19th century, scholars prematurely generalized
this into the assumption that Ārya
was an early synonym for “Indo-European”. This projection of more recent
situations onto the proto-historic past is now considered as a childhood
disease of the discipline of Indo-European philology.

2.6. A synonym for “Indo-European”?

If some
Indo-European peoples used ārya or a
cognate form as an ethnic self-designation, could this not be a remnant of a
pan-Indo-European usage? Could it be that Slavic or Italic had the same usage
originally but lost it over time?

In the 19th
century, many scholars explored this scenario, including claims of the use of
an Ārya cognate as ethnic
self-designation in Celtic (Eire) and
Germanic, but these have been abandoned. So has the relation with German Ehre, “honour”, which is in fact from *aiz-, cognate with Latin aes-timare, whence English esteem. The etymon of Eire seems to be *iweriu, < piHwerion,
“fat land”, “opulent country”. The Irish word aire, “freeman”, may be related to ārya, but it is a different word and is not known to have served as
an ethnic self-designation. Thus far, only Anatolian, Iranian and Vedic
Sanskrit are certified to have used it as a self-referential ethnonym.

So, there
is no firm indication that Ārya, or *Heryo, ever was a pan-Indo-European or
Proto-Indo-European self-designation and thus a valid synonym for
“Indo-European”: “ Although in Indo-Iranian the word takes on an ethnic
meaning, there are no grounds for ascribing this semantic use to
Proto-Indo-European, i.e. there is no evidence that the speakers of the
proto-language referred to themselves explicitly as ‘Aryans’.” [Mallory &
Adams:266] But in theory, it remains a possibility.

Post-Vedic meanings

Vedic standards

From
meaning “belonging to the Paurava tradition”, “Vedic”, Ārya evolves in a trans-ethnic cultural sense. The Dharmaśāstra-s of Manu
and Baudhāyana relate it to wider
territory of North India, Āryavarta,
but distinguish the Kuru-Pañcāla
region, i.e. from the Saraswati eastward to the Ganga-Yamuna doāb, as the best: there, the people
naturally observe the Vedic norms, so all others should seek to emulate their
customs. To Manu, their defining ingredients are the Vedic sacrificial ritual
and the observance of varnāśramadharma, the differentiation of society
according to social function and age group, each with its own duties and
privileges. The absence of order, i.e. of ritual (as, to a large extent, in
modern society) and of functional differentiation (as in tribal societies with
their supposed Ur-communism), counts as Anārya,
uncivilized or barbaric.

Thus, the Manu Smrti [10.45] says that
those outside the caste system, “whether they speak barbarian languages or Ārya
languages, are regarded as aliens”, indicating that some people spoke the same
language as the Ārya-s but didn’t have their status of Ārya
because they disregarded the varnāśramadharma.

Note that
we need not agree with the Śāstrakāra-s
that the varnāśramadharma is truly “Vedic”, for we do not
find it in the first nine books of the Rg-Veda. Even in the tenth book, the
last and youngest one, we find it mentioned only once, and there only in the
vaguest use, viz. the Purusa Sūkta’s
recognition of the existence of four functions in society, without any details
of how their personnel is recruited nor of how they should conduct themselves
vis-à-vis one another, the very stuff that is the main focus of the Śāstra-s. Like medieval and contemporary Hindus, the Śāstra composers may have considered as ”Vedic”
everything they held sacred, regardless of whether a particular norm or custom
is indeed traceable to the Veda-s.

Varna
meaning

One
resultant semantic development is "upper-caste", meaning those people
who received the Vedic initiation. Since Ksatriya-s
and Brahmins had their own more specific titles, the general honorific Ārya often designated the Vaiśya. It is also used as a form of address to any
honoured person, which is probably the origin of the present-day honorific
suffix -jī, evolved through the
Prakrit forms ayya, ajja, 'jje.

The term
distinguished those who had received the Vedic initiation symbolized by the
sacred thread. In particular, it became a form of address for members of the Dvija (twice-born) castes, i.e. those
whose members (or later, whose male members) wore the sacred thread. And among
these, it was particularly in use among the lowest of the three, the Vaiśya-s. Whereas the Ksatriya-s and Brahmins further distinguish their own
specific varna also setting
themselves apart from the other Dvija-s,
Vaiśya-s seem happy enough to set themselves apart
from the non-Dvija-s.

We find a
parallel situation in Western society too, mutatis mutandis. An employee or servant
(Śūdra) has no
title, he may even be addressed with his first name by his boss. The employer (Vaiśya), by contrast, is addressed as “Mister X”
(from magister, “greater one,
master”), or “Sir” (from senior,
“elder”). These general forms of respectful address could in principle also be
applied to Ksatriya
professions, but in those cases you will normally specify as Captain, General,
Minister, Excellency, Your Majesty. Likewise, people in Brahmin professions
will be addressed as Doctor, Professor, Reverend, all the way up to Your
Holiness. In their cases, just calling them “Mister” would be a slight on their
specific state of merit, whereas it is perfectly fine to address a businessman
as “Mister” regardless of the extent of his business achievement.

Applied to
communities and cultural patterns, Ārya
came to mean “of Vedic tradition”, “conforming to Vedic norms”. For insiders to
the Vedic tradition, it would consequently mean “up to standard”, “proper”, "civilized".
To outsiders, it would still mean “Vedic”, and refer to those people or
communities distinguished as adhering to Vedic norms. Those outsiders, who used
the term not to designate themselves but to designate outsiders whom they saw
observing or bringing the Vedic tradition, included the natives of South India,
where the term acquired the ethnic connotation of “North-Indian”.

Soon enough, people started objecting that nobility or Āryatva is not a matter of birth but of
character, e.g.: “O my Lord, a person who
is chanting Your holy name, although
born of a low family like that of a Candāla, is situated on
the highest platform of self-realization. Such a person must have performed all
kinds of penances and sacrifices according to Vedic scriptures many, many times
after bathing in all the holy places of pilgrimage. Such a person is considered to be the best of the Ārya family."
(Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 3.33.7)

The meaning
of the term became vaguer, from conformity with a specific (viz. Vedic) code or
with criteria of high birth to a general quality of character, “noble”. That is
exactly parallel to the evolution of the European term "noble", which
originally meant someone belonging by birth to the nobility class, the princes
and dukes and earls. The same evolution also affected the Chinese word junzi. People can see for themselves
that qualities of character appear in all classes and all religions, so the
concept “noble” or ārya got delinked
from its religious or sociological basis.

Ethical meaning

From the Hindu Epics on down, Ārya and Anārya are frequently
used in the moral sense. People are sometimes classified as Ārya or Anārya based on their behavior, but the ethnic or caste meaning
still tends to shine through.

In the Rāmāyana, the Vānara-s
and Rāksasa-s call themselves Ārya. The monkey king Sugrīva is called an Ārya and speaks of his brother Vali as an Ārya. Rāvana
regards himself and his ministers as Ārya,
which is only natural as he is a Brahmin and descendent of the Vedic sage Pulastya. Likewise, Rāma’s being an Ārya may
have as much to do with his Ksatriya
status as with his exemplary moral conduct.

In the Mahābhārata, the term is generally applied to people according to their behaviour. Duhśāsana, who tried to disrobe Draupadī in the Kaurava court, is therefore called Anārya. Vidura, the son of sage Vyāsa
by a maidservant, was the only person in the assembly whose behaviour is called
Ārya because he alone openly
protested against Draupadi’s disrobing. The Pāndava-s
reproached themselves for their Anārya
conduct when they killed Drona
through deception.

However,
this should not be taken to prove, as Hindu reformists are wont to claim, that
this ethical meaning supersedes and nullifies the social stratification
meaning. Just as the metaphorical meaning of “crusade” or “jihād” as “moral struggle against the evil in oneself and society”
presupposes the meaning of “holy war” and doesn’t nullify the underlying
doctrine of religious war, so likewise the extended usage of Ārya in Sanskrit or “noble” in European
languages presupposes and doesn’t discard its literal sociological meaning,
viz. “characteristic of the hereditary upper class”.

“Noble” in Buddhism

Against the
association of the anglicised form “Aryan” with colonial and Nazi racism,
modern Hindus always insist that the term Ārya
only means “Vedic” or “noble” and has no racial or ethnic connotation. This
purely moral, non-ethnic meaning is in evidence in the Buddhist notions of the “four
noble truths” (catvāri-ārya-satyāni) and the “noble eightfold path” (ārya-astāngika-mārga).
So, the meaning “noble” applies for recent centuries and as far back as the
Buddha’s age (ca. 500 BC), and contrasts with the Vedic age (beyond 1000 BC), when
the ethnic sense prevailed, and post-Vedic Hindu society, when either Vedic
sectarianism or caste pride animated the use of the term Ārya.

At least,
this is what the Buddhists claim: that when the Buddha lived and taught, the
term Ārya had a general psychological-ethical
meaning, “noble”, larger than and not dependent on any specific cultural or
religious tradition or social class. However, we must look at the historical
data, even and especially when pertaining to a venerated person like the
Buddha, without assuming modern and sectarian predilections.

Firstly, we
must take into account the possibility that he too used the term in the implied
sense of “Vedic”, broadly conceived. That after Vedic tradition got carried
away into what he deemed non-essentials, he intended to restore what he
conceived as the original Vedic spirit. After all, the anti-Vedicism and
anti-Brahmanism now routinely attributed to him, are largely in the eye of the
modern beholder. Though later Brahmin-born Buddhist thinkers polemicized
against Brahmin institutions and the idolizing of the Veda, the Buddha himself
didn’t mind attributing to the Vedic gods Indra and Brahma his recognition as
the Buddha and his mission to teach. At the end of his life, he unwittingly got
involved in a political intrigue when Varsakāra,
a minister of the Magadha kingdom, asked him for the secret of the strength of
the republican states. Among the seven unfailing factors of strength of a
society, he included “sticking to ancient laws and traditions” and “maintaining
sacred sites and honouring ancient rituals”. [Dīgha Nikāya 2:73, discussed in Elst 2010:197-199] So, contrary to
his modern image as a “revolutionary”, the Buddha’s view of the good society
was close to Confucian and indeed Brahminical conservatism. Far from denouncing
“empty ritual”, he praised it as a factor of social harmony and strength.In this light, his understanding of Ārya may have been closer to the
Brahminical interpretation of the term as “Vedic” than nowadays usually assumed.

This even
applies to the Buddha’s view of caste. When predicting the future Buddha
Maitreya, he had him born in a Brahmin family; and he had over 40% Veda-trained
Brahmins among his ordained disciples. His impact on his disciples was such
that after his death, the messages by cities claiming a part of his ashes for
veneration in stupas took the form of: “He was a ksatriya, we are ksatriya-s,
therefore we are entitled to a share in his ashes.” Clearly, lay followers of
the Buddha did not shed their caste pride, nor feel a need to even pretend to
when speaking in a Buddha-related setting par excellence.

So, secondly,
the Buddha may not have renounced the caste-related meaning of Ārya altogether. After all,
determination by birth was not alien to the worldview of the Buddha, whose
ascent to Awakening was predetermined by physical marks he was born with,
according to common Buddhist belief. Buddhist scripture makes much of the
Buddha’s noble birth in the Solar lineage, as a relative (and reincarnation) of
Rāma. So, as Gómez [1999:132] points
out, the Buddhist usage of Ārya is
subject to “ambiguities”, e.g. in the Mahāvibhāsā:
“The Buddha said, ‘What the noble ones say is the truth, what the other say is
not true. And why is this? The noble ones […] understand things as they are,
the common folk do not understand. […] Furthermore, they are called noble
truths because they are possessed by those who own the wealth and assets of the
noble ones. Furthermore, they are called noble truths because they are
possessed by those who are conceived in the womb of a noble person.”[cit. Gómez 1999:133]

To play
devil’s advocate, we could even extend our skepticism of the Buddha’s
progressive image to an involvement in the racist understanding of Ārya. Some pre-WW2 racists waxed
enthusiastic about descriptions by contemporaries of the Buddha as “tall and
light-skinned”. [Schuman 1989:194] That would seem to make him “Aryan” in the
then-common sense of “Nordic”. Nowadays, some scholars including Michael Witzel
[on his own Indo-Eurasian Research
yahoo list] suggest that the Buddha’s Śākya tribe may have been of Iranian origin (related
to Śaka,
“Scythian”), which would explain his taller stature and lighter skin in
comparison with his Gangetic fellow-men. It would also explain their fierce
endogamy, i.e. their systematic practice of cousin marriage. Indeed, the Buddha
himself had only four great-grandparents because his paternal grandfather was
the brother of his maternal grandmother while his maternal grandfather was the
brother of his paternal grandmother. The Brahminical lawbooks prohibited this
close endogamy (gotra-s are
exogamous) and like the Catholic Church, imposed respect for "prohibited
degrees of consanguinity"; but consanguineous marriages were common among
Iranians. (It was also common among Dravidians, a lead not yet fully exploited
by neo-Buddhists claiming the Buddha as “pre-Aryan”.) The Śākya tribe justified the practice through pride in
their direct pure descent from the Ārya
patriarch Manu Vaivasvata, but this could be a made-up explanation adapted to
the Indian milieu and hiding their Iranian origin (which they themselves too
could have forgotten), still visible in their physical profile. So, that would
make the Buddha an “Aryan” in the historically most justified ethnic use of the
term, viz. as “Iranian”.

Ārya =
Hindu?

The
relative authoritative Hindu “law-book” Manu
Smrti[10.43 ff.] claims that
the Greeks and the Chinese had originally been Ārya-s too but that they
had lapsed from Ārya standards and therefore lost the status of Ārya.
So, non-Indians could be Ārya, on condition of observing certain
cultural and ethical standards, viz. those laid down in the Manu Smrti itself. The term Ārya
was culturally defined: conforming to Vedic tradition.

Nonetheless,
Manu had a strong pro-Indian bias, and at least in the two millennia since the Manu
Smrti, the only ones
fulfilling the requirement of living by Vedic norms were Indians. In 1875, a
socially progressive but religiously fundamentalist movement (“back to the
Vedas”, i.e. before the “degeneracy” of the “casteist” Śāstra-s and the “superstitious” Purāna-s) had been founded under
the name Ārya Samāj, in effect the “Vedicist society”. They used the
term in an exclusive sense: it excluded many Hindus not by caste but by their
degree of strict observance of the (putative) Vedic norms. It rejected all
non-Vedic elements in Hinduism as Anārya,
a distinction that has a certain historical justification in the Vedic
identification of Ārya with the Vedic
tribe.

But the
modern age has also seen a rise in the inclusive use of the term, as referring
to all Hindus, or indeed all Dharmic Indians. During India’s freedom struggle,
philosopher and freedom fighter Sri Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950) wrote in
English about “the Aryan race”, by which he meant “the Hindu nation”, nothing
more nor less. In 1914-21, together with a French-Jewish admirer, Mirra
Richard-Alfassa, he also published a monthly devoted to the cause of India’s
self-rediscovery and emancipation, the Ārya. If the word Ārya had
not become tainted by the colonial and racist use of its Europeanized form Aryan,
chances are that by now it would have replaced the word Hindu (which
many Hindus resent as a Persian exonym unknown to Hindu scripture) as the
standard term of Hindu self-reference.

19 comments:

As for cousin marriage, it could just be a form of clannishness common amongst mountain and desert folk.

Like snake worship, now mostly restricted to Kerala, Karnatak and Maharashtra but was once prevalent all across India(Takshashila in todays Pakistan was a famous Naga pilgrimage centre) cousin marriage may have been more prominent.

South Indians follow pretty much the same laws on marriage as North Indians but still often observe them in the breach.Uncle and niece marriage is not approved by the scriptures but we have Brahmanical castes such as Kammas and Brahmins engaging in it in Tamil Nadu and Andhra

According to Greek and Chinese travelers, Gangetic peoples were described as darker, taller and more courageous than Northwestern peoples.Even so dark and light are relative terms and does not leave out the possibility of quite a few light skinned Gangetic types

Today you will find many tall individuals with Iranian complexions in UP. Some of these claim Scythian origin such as Rajputs, others like Jats and Yadav are purely Vedic of Chandravanshi lineaege.

In Bihar, the original fair skinned stock such as Nandas(the Nanda emperor mocks Chanakya for his dark skin), Mauryas, Guptas etc has largely died out due to frequent wars and emigration and is replaced by darker and shorter aboriginal tribals such as Mundas and Santhals(I think)

Just curious if you Dravidians are not Arya ,what are their origins since the implication is that they are not related to the tribals.

My hypothesis is that early Dravidian civilization is an amalgam of Middle Eastern settlers from Mesopotamia via sea and land(thru Indus Valley, another hybrid civilization) and local Vedic stock who had settled inSouth India as early as Mahabharata.

Hence Chola, Chera and Pandya are mentioned in that Epic. There is no pure Tamil etymology for those dynasties.

Proto Dravidians may have imposed some aspect of their culture such as language,grand temple building, astronomy, snake worship, devdasis(seen in Babylon),amoral and ruthless warfare and blood and hero cults not to mention marriage between blood relations.

Hence southern India which was once part of janapadas became Vratya or anarya.

But ultimately Vedic culture prevailed again with the migration of Brahmins and Kshatriyas in the first millennium BC

In light of all this, the fact that Manu, the progenitor of all all Vedic peoples including Solar and Lunar races hailed from the region of Dravida makes more sense.

I would like to know your thoughts on these matters Dr Elst if you don't mind.

The Purana had how many authors exactly?. The Purana are called 'Smriti' meaning from memory, what is there to be misunderstood from memory? If Parashurama was of Parsu tribe then the Purana would have explicitly 'Remembered' that to be so.

The Purana and Ithasa also find mention in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad in Rishi Yagnavalkya's diaglogue with his Wife Maitreyi meaning these are very ancient tales.

I know that Mr. Talageri says the name Jamadagni cannot be of Vedic origin if so what about the following names: Jahnavi, Jabali, Jagdish, Janak? not of Vedic origin?. Jambudvip? Not of Vedic origin?. Jamadgni was the son of Rishi Richik, is Richik of 'Parsu' origin? What about Bhrigu? now you may say that the Teacher of Daityas is also of Bhrigu clan but not Rishi Bhrigu himself. In the name Parashuram there are two things 'Parsu' or 'Parasu' and Ram. How did a man of the Parsu tribe get the name 'Ram'?.

Also the Veda are the creation of Brahmin Seers (mostly) not the Paurava tribes (The Kshatriya who became a Brahmana 'Vishwamitra' was of neither the Solar Dynasty nor Lunar Dynasty), it is possible that the priests of the Paurava tribe addressed the Puru Kings with the term Arya, did not other Brahmins 'exist'? as Priests of Kings of other tribes like the Suryavanshi Kings. I find it difficult to believe that the Aikshvaka dynasty had nothing to do with the Veda as they exist. They then must have had their own scriptures but where are they? same goes for the Yadu tribes.

Buddha was of Shakya clan which is of Ikshvaku lineage so my question is when Buddha used the term Arya did he mean 'Arya' according to the Paurava understanding of the term or of his own Shakya or Aikshvaka understanding of the term?.

If indeed the Veda are the creations of the Paurava tribe then they must have been a very very dominant lot in all of India during their time but is that truly so?, the Itihaas and Purana do not suggest any such dominance. Each clan 'Solar or Lunar' has had it's time at the top.

The term Arya seems to have evolved from an Ethnic meaning to a more general meaning but how does that mean that the Veda were the composition of only the Paurava Tribe?.

Where did the compositions of the other clans and tribes go? vanished? How come the ancient tales the Purana and Itihaas are also silent on this then?.

As you say in your article other clans and tribes called themselves Arya like Ravana did, just because he was a Brahmin does not mean the Paurava tribe people would consider him Arya, was he or his father the priest of the Paurava tribe?. He considered himself Arya, simple. Same with Ram then.

In his claims about Paurava Tribe with respect to composition of the Veda and regarding Parashuram has Talageri been overactive and as a result tried to play a balancing game?. It is tempting to think so in the light of hs claims.

In my first comment I said "The Purana and Ithasa also find mention in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad in Rishi Yagnavalkya's diaglogue with his Wife Maitreyi meaning these are very ancient tales". What I mean is the Purana and Itihaas are very very ancient so people should stop acting like they are comparatively recent creations. They are the store of India's History not the Veda because the Veda have a very different purpose which is Religious, the Itihaas and Purana are by their very names History and Ancient 'Tales'. Take them seriously.

@ KoenraadAre you aware of the recent ancient dna paper( the biggest of its kind yet) on Europeans which speaks of the population having'South Asian Type Ancestry' entering the Samara valley during Copper Age? ( See the Page 56-57 of the PDF file for the information)http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/02/10/013433Thank you for providing another important article:)....

Your mentioning of the word "Arya" changing its meaning South India; it has gradually changed depending on region and context. One of the South Indian language uses the word 'aiyya'. But, it is not for any particular community. It is supposed to be a respectful way of addressing a person (like 'Sir'). The 12th century vachanas say, "You reach heaven by addressing someone as aiyya. Calling disrespectfully, you will reach hell". Here, aiya can be anybody (not just Brahmin).Currently, 'Aiya' is used for any one when it is used alone. (What sir = en aiyya). But more formal way (respected sir = aiya nore) is generally used for Brahmins. (These terminologies are a generation old. They are getting eroded with frequent use of English).

"The one exception in the Rg-Veda where arya seems to have a non-ethnic, generally moral meaning, is RV 9:63:5: krnvanto visvam aryam, “making everything arya” or “doing every arya (deed)”, usually translated as “ennobling the world”".

See so there is a different meaning but please tell us why is this the exception?

Shravan Tanjore has expressed some doubts about my identification of the Vedas with the Pauravas alone. But this has been done on the basis of a complete analysis of all the data in the Rigveda, which proves this identification beyond any doubt. All this information is given in my books, and can not be reproduced here, but to cite just one point:'In a tribal sense, it clearly refers only to Pūrus: in I.59.2, Agni is said to be produced by the God to be a light unto the ārya, and in the sixth verse of the hymn, it is clear that the hymn is composed on behalf of the Pūrus. Likewise, in VII.5.6, Agni is said to drive away the Dasyus and bring forth broad light for the ārya, and in the third verse of the hymn the deed is said to be done for the Pūrus.'

Thanks you Mr.Talageri for your reply. I will try to find out as much as I can about your answer.

In your reply one of the things you have said is " in I.59.2, Agni is said to be produced by the God to be a light unto the ārya, and in the sixth verse of the hymn, it is clear that the hymn is composed on behalf of the Pūrus.".

So the Priests composed the verse on the behalf of the Puru which is clear in a particular verse. Alright but the Puru were not the only ones to have Priests. Yadu and Ikshvaku Kings also had priests, are there no verses anywhere in Rk Veda that have been composed on their behalf by their priests?.

Also if the Veda were composed for Puru King then were there no Veda during the time of Nahusha the grand father of Puru? Were there any Veda when Yayati was a young person?. What traditions did Nahusha and Yayati follow then?.

What traditions did the Yadu and Ikshavaku clans follow?.

How exactly should we come to terms with the fact that the Itihaas and Purana are silent over this? They are Smriti after all.

Dr Elst said also quoting Mr. Talageri "For those who are inclined to dismiss Talageri’s views as discredited by his Hindu nationalism, note that in a number of respects, his position goes against the majority opinion among Hindu nationalists, e.g. his denying an implication of moral superiority to the Vedic Ārya-s. While many Hindu writers assume that “the battles between the Vedic Aryans and their enemies were somehow battles between Good and Evil (…) our analysis of the Rigveda and Vedic history is not based on this rosy viewpoint” . [Talageri 2008:368] In fact, “there is nothing to indicate that the Āryas were more civilized and cultured than the Dāsas, (…) nor that the struggles between the Āryas and Dāsas involved any noble social, moral and ethical issues.” [Talageri 2000:405]".

How exactly did anyone conclude this? By considering the Rk Veda as a history textbook that is how, if anyone wants more details please refer to the Itihaas and Puran their very names mean History and Ancient respectively.

Are we to believe now that Indra, Agni and the many other Deva or Maruts and countless others were Puru Gods?. How do you reconcile the proposed theory with the real vacuum it creates?.

Dr. Elst says "Against this, Talageri [2008:] shakes the Hindutva pride further by arguing that the name Paraśurāma, “Rama with the axe”, is a misreading by Puranic authors of the Vedic name Parśurāma, “Persian Rama”, a nickname of Rāma Jāmadagnya, author of RV X.110, for whom he manages to demonstrate an Iranian ancestry.".

How exactly does that shake Hindutva pride? Even if Mr. Talageri's speculation is true it still means Rama Jamadagnya was a Vedic person not of another religion.

Also how did get the name Ram? A persian with the name Ram? You may manage an interpretation of Jamadagni (which in the first place means it is also possible to demonstrate a non Persian origin) but how do you manage to explain that a Persian was named Ram?.

Atleast according to the Purana Rucheeka was the father of Jamadagni, how to Persianize Rucheeka?.

Can Jambudvipa, Jambavati, Jabali, Jambavan, Jagadish, Jahnavi, Janak etc also be demonstrated to be from other tribes/clans in this case Persian?. The Itihaasa and Purana are important and must be given due consideration else such questions will arise.

Thank you for this informative article Dr. Koenraad Elst. In Tamil "Ayya" has also long been used as an honorific in referring to or addressing male elders and respectable males irrespective of caste. Lately this is falling out of use with the English word "sir" used instead. Perhaps this is due to the influence of Dravidian politics.

(1) In the Nirukta, "Arya" is derived from the Sanskrit root "ṛ - gatau" meaning "motion", which is the same derivation for "ṛtam" (dynamic cosmic order) and "ṛṣi" (Vedic seer). Nirukta is not that far removed from the Vedas, and preserves much of the original Vedic sense of words. Agni is called Arya, ṛṣi and ṛtavān, ṛtajā and ṛtam, showing that Arya meant someone who understands the dynamic order of the macrocosm and brings that order to the microcosm of human society through the ṛṣi, who is the embodiment of this cosmic truth. So there is an original spiritual sense in the word. However, different ethnic groups (Vedic Indians and Iranians) may have used it as a self-descriptive in the belief that they were closer to the cosmic order than their hostile neighbors.

(2) I disagree with Mr. Talageri's identifying Veda with only the Pūru "tribe". Remember that the Ṛgveda is full of mention of "ancient seers, our forefathers who found the path before us - Aṅgirā, Bhṛgu, Atharvā" to whom the current seers trace their ancestry. We should seriously consider the current version of the Ṛgveda as a remnant or an edition of a still older Veda corresponding to the older seers. The already sophisticated language and concepts presuppose a long history of composing hymns and observing Yajña ritual. The ancestors of Anu, Druhyu, Pūru, Yadu and Turvaśa would then be contemporaneous with the older seers. Besides, in the hymns to the Aśvins, the twin Vedic gods are praised for having saved Yadu and Turvaśa from the flood. If all 5 "tribes" are not considered Vedic people, this has no explanation.

(3) On the topic of castes being mentioned late in the Ṛgveda, I have 2 views. One, we are falling into the trap of circumstantial mention in one late hymn while the institution nevertheless existed during the period of the earlier hymns. Two, the earlier hymns fall into the golden age of "Kṛta Yuga" of Purāṇas, when there were no castes and no social laws.

(4) The north-to-south migration of Brahmins that you mention is probably a later A.D. event, because even in the earliest B.C. Sangam literature, Agastya is already the patron saint of Tamil grammar, and the poems talk of priests performing fire rituals.

(5) Your comparison of Indian caste appellations to European ones is very informative and accurate, I would say. You have updated the caste language to modern jargon. This shows that the caste system is really an economic division of labor that is inevitable in any society, modern or ancient. This is good thumb-nosing to the caste-system-naysayers.

(6) Thanks for reminding me to add another word (Ayya) to my list of tadbhava words:

Talageri is confounding Vedic and Purāṇic names. In the Ṛgveda there is only one Rāma Jāmadagnya, whose father is Jamadagni Bhārgava, whose father is Bhṛgu himself, one of the founding fathers of Vedic culture. In the Veda, we never come across this Rāma as an axe-wielding warrior like in the Purāṇa mythology. There is no way this Rāma is Iranian, although he probably lived along the western coast of India. This is supported by 2 sources: 1, the legend of him recovering land along the coast of Maharashtra and Karnataka; 2, Bharuch in Gujarat was originally Bhṛgukakṣa, or the region of the Bhṛgus.

Allergy is a problem related skin. It comes threw rashes, spots at the skin and it has the problem itching also burning. It makes people discomfort. So, we must keep our self safe and proper care.ALOKA UST-9126

Suppose we applied the methods of comparative linguistics. Since "John" is found in so many populations of speakers of Indo-European languages, would we come up with a "proto-Indo-European John"? Maybe with an origin in the Eurasian steppes?

About Me

Koenraad Elst (°Leuven 1959) distinguished himself early on as eager to learn and to dissent. After a few hippie years he studied at the KU Leuven, obtaining MA degrees in Sinology, Indology and Philosophy. After a research stay at Benares Hindu University he did original fieldwork for a doctorate on Hindu nationalism, which he obtained magna cum laude in 1998.
As an independent researcher he earned laurels and ostracism with his findings on hot items like Islam, multiculturalism and the secular state, the roots of Indo-European, the Ayodhya temple/mosque dispute and Mahatma Gandhi's legacy. He also published on the interface of religion and politics, correlative cosmologies, the dark side of Buddhism, the reinvention of Hinduism, technical points of Indian and Chinese philosophies, various language policy issues, Maoism, the renewed relevance of Confucius in conservatism, the increasing Asian stamp on integrating world civilization, direct democracy, the defence of threatened freedoms, and the Belgian question. Regarding religion, he combines human sympathy with substantive skepticism.